Blue Ridge Parkway

We are beginning the ultimate 2010 road trip: North along the 469-mile length of the Blue Ridge Parkway followed by 105-mile-long Skyline Drive that winds through Shenandoah National Park. Then west to St. Joseph, Missouri, to follow the Oregon Trail to Oregon City, Oregon, before returning via the route followed by Lewis & Clark along the Columbia and Missouri rivers.

Wayward bears addicted to Kentucky Fried Chicken are the least of a park ranger’s worries. Just ask Bruce Bytnar, who worked at the Blue Ridge Parkway for 27 years before he retired in 2008. In his book, A Park Ranger’s Life: Thirty-Two Years of Protecting Our National Parks, Bytnar tells the real story behind what it is like to patrol a 469-mile long park through some of the best scenery the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and North Carolina have to offer.

Seventy-five years is a pretty good show of longevity, and shouldn't be treated lightly. It certainly isn't being overlooked at the Blue Ridge Parkway, where two symposiums are scheduled to celebrate the beautiful ribbon of highway that runs through the Appalachian Mountains.

If you're planning a spring trip to a National Park Service site, you may be able to save a little money if you schedule your visit between April 17 and 25, 2010. Free admission to all 392 NPS sites is being offered during National Park Week

Hundreds of hikers set out along the Appalachian National Scenic Trail from Springer Mountain, Georgia, come springtime with sights set on reaching Mount Kathadin in Maine before summer expires. But how many are blind?

Part of FDR's "New Deal," the Blue Ridge Parkway was envisioned as an economic development tool that would pump both life and dollars into the Appalachian Mountain Range between Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountains national parks. But the long and winding road with the fantastic vistas also took a good deal of life out of the landscape as farms that stood in the path were razed and the families moved off.

Jim Bunning, Kentucky's contrary U.S. senator, singlehandedly has shut down road construction projects across the nation, including many in national parks, because he doesn't want to help middle-class families weather the economic storm, U.S. Department of Transportation officials said Monday.

While some House Republicans are denigrating a proposal to spend $50 million to create a national historic site in the Virgin Islands, one that would preserve a centuries-old plantation and critical natural resources, a GOP senator is asking for $75 million to be spent on land acquisition for the Blue Ridge Parkway.

A major winter storm has created hazardous driving conditions in the three major Appalachian parks. All of Skyline Drive and some sections of the Blue Ridge Parkway have been closed. Great Smoky's Newfound Gap Road is subject to closures at night due to ice.

Any mention of national park lodges causes most people to envision park icons such as Old Faithful Inn, El Tovar, Ahwahnee, or Many Glacier Hotel. Dozens of other national park lodges are scattered across the country, of course, although many receive little publicity and remain virtually unknown to many experienced travelers.

For travelers and emergency workers in much of the country, any dreams of a "White Christmas" will likely be remembered as bad ones this year. Many parks have been impacted by recent storms, but among the hardest hit are the Blue Ridge Parkway and Cumberland Gap National Historical Park.

Regular guests of national park lodges have undoubtedly noticed persistent increases in room rates. Although we no longer have the receipt, it seems that we paid $225 per night during our 1996 stay in Yosemite National Park’s Ahwahnee for a room that now goes for approximately $500 per night. It probably doesn’t surprise you to learn that during the past decade lodging rates in national parks have risen faster than the Consumer Price Index.

A small turtle from the eastern U.S. A species of trout native to Glacier and North Cascades national parks. Grizzly bears. A prairie orchard. A coral. These are among the ten plant, fish, animal, and bird species listed in a new report as being the "hottest" species imperiled by climate change.

As a recent court case illustrates, people convicted of poaching animals in national parks face stiff penalties. Two North Carolina men who pleaded guilty to killing a bear on the Blue Ridge Parkway were given prison time to reflect on the error of their ways.

Blue Ridge Parkway’s 75th Anniversary is next year, but the celebration is already getting under way. Two BRP75 Opening Weekend events are taking place today in Asheville, North Carolina, a city that learned on a happy day in November 1934 that it would become a parkway community after all.

A nearly $4 million deal with one of the country's largest railroads has placed almost 1,500 wooded acres, including some that are highly visible from Blue Ridge Parkway overlooks, into a conservation easement that will protect them from ever being logged or developed.

Fall color season is a busy time on the Blue Ridge Parkway, but busy or not, officials at the Blue Ridge Parkway aren't taking any chances with the risk of a potential landslide on the scenic roadway. An emergency closure of a short section of the parkway near Ashville is in effect.

Fall is a wonderful season to visit the Blue Ridge Parkway, and the park has good news for travelers on the North Carolina portion of the scenic drive. Work on the Goshen Creek Bridge has been completed and the section of the Parkway between mileposts 285 and 288 has reopened to traffic

When we think about problems with bears in national parks, areas such as Yellowstone and Yosemite often come to mind, but bruins can be an issue "back East" as well. A picnic area along the Blue Ridge Parkway has been closed temporary to help resolve a bear-people food issue.

The climate is not static. Ice ages come and go, pushing rivers of ice south and then pulling them back north across continents as temperatures and snowfalls rise and fall. Animal and plant species either stay ahead of these icy incursions and adapt, or perish.

Even experienced travelers often are surprised to learn that some national park lodges still offer rooms without a private bathroom. In fact, in making a reservation at one of the lodges you might discover there is no choice other than a room that requires use of a community bathroom. While European visitors are not surprised and might even expect rooms without a private bathroom, many U.S. travelers don’t look kindly on the need to use a bathroom that is just down the hallway.

If you live in North Carolina and were hoping to attach a Blue Ridge Parkway commemorative 75th anniversary license plate onto your rig, you can forget about it. The foundation has decided too many obstacles stand in the way of producing the special plates.

Where once we had guidebooks, topographic maps, and campfire talks to help us appreciate and understand the national parks, there's now a growing number of electronic applications for your iPhones, iPod Touches, and other cellphones and media devices to overwhelm the senses.

Plans for celebrating the Blue Ridge Parkway’s 75th Anniversary in 2010 are moving along well. There's a rich mix of activities and events being planned, including community programs as well as professional seminars.

Tunnel vision is one thing, but tunnel knowledge is quite another matter. See if you can sort things out in this week’s quiz. Answers are at the end. If we catch you peeking, we’ll make you hold the steel for a cross-eyed sledge wielder.